169 files, 80 per cent sequential, 100 per cent reads of various sizes.

Power Consumption

Load

NAS power draw recorded while running CrystalDiskMark.

Idle

NAS power draw recorded when idle.

Standby

NAS power draw recorded with drives in standby, if applicable.

Noise

A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise output while running CrystalDiskmark.

Notes

All comparison servers are tested using a single Gigabit Ethernet link with jumbo frames disabled and are connected to our test client and network via a TP-Link TL-SG1024 switch.

Server and storage benchmarks are fraught with numerous variables, ranging from disks used, file system, network equipment and of course the number of connected clients. Keeping things relatively simple, our tests are carried out using 4TB WD Red (WD40EFRX) hard disks in RAID 1 or RAID 5 configurations depending on number of bays. Alternative disks are only used when a pre-populated NAS is being reviewed.

To provide a look at potential performance, our first benchmark is the freely available and widely used CrystalDiskMark. Our second benchmark - NAS Performance Toolkit, developed by Intel - is a file-system exerciser designed to provide performance comparisons between network storage devices. Intel's utility focuses on user-level performance using real-world workload traces gathered from common applications. NASPT reproduces the file-system traffic observed in various traces onto a chosen storage device and records performance in MB/s.

Last but not least, we measure NAS power draw during three states; under load, idle and standby mode if applicable, while a noise reading is taken using a PCE-318 meter.